The Geas at the Heart
by keita52
Summary: There are things that Angela can never tell anyone. Crossover with Charles Stross' Laundry Files series.


Angela is the only one who's not overjoyed that Pelant is dead.

She can tell that everyone else is. Booth and Brennan have already started talking about what each of them wants for the wedding. Arastoo has his arm around Cam, and it warms Angela's heart to see Cam so happy. Jack is on the floor playing with Christine and Michael Vincent.

The geas on Angela keeps her happy and smiling. This is a situation where she could blow her cover by revealing her true feelings, and she feels the magic tightening around her to keep her in line with everyone else.

Brennan viewed Pelant as a threat to her, above all others, and Angela knows that Booth agrees - in no small part because of what he forced Booth to do, breaking the brief engagement and hurting Brennan in the process.

But Angela knows that she was Pelant's real target. She understands why he made it look otherwise, why his only direct attack against her was forcing Jack to give up his family fortune. What threat does Angela pose to anyone, much less a serial killer, beyond her association with Brennan?

True, was Brennan who lead her down this path. But she doesn't blame her old friend for that. If she did, that would take away one of the few bright spots that Angela has had since the day they found her.

* * *

It was shortly after she found out she was pregnant. After returning from a marvelous time in Paris and coming home to Brennan. Angela was the only one in the lab, having stayed later than she intended.

When the four men in black suits invaded her space, her first thought was that Jack was right after all. Then one of them spoke words - it sounded like a string of nonsense - but they froze Angela in place, literally. She was unable to move, to speak, to do anything at all.

They ruthlessly broke her encryptions, blowing through years of work in a matter of seconds. They copied everything to a hard drive, examining it as they went. When they were done, they relaxed the bindings on her and started critiquing her work. She found that she had to answer them truthfully, no matter how much she wanted to hold back.

Then they told her exactly what she'd been doing, all these years. How what she thought was clever tricks was actually more akin to magic. How it had been proven that they lived in a multiverse (and she was thankful she was married to a nerd, because she could actually follow what they were talking about) and that most of the other universes "near" theirs contained eldritch abominations that would have made even H.P. Lovecraft run screaming.

How these creatures wanted to come to the universe she was living in.

What they would do if they ever got a body.

The way that they had handled everything was making her sick with fear, and she wanted it to not be real. She offered to stop, to come up with some reason and resign her job here, to destroy her work rather than let someone else use it. It would set Brennan back, but better that than endangering the lives of everyone she cared about.

They told her that wasn't possible - that once she'd started down the path, it would be impossible for her to stop.

She'd told them that she wanted to stop, feeling as emotional as she had ever been in her entire life. She'd told them about the pregnancy.

Their reactions frightened her. In a night full of terrifying moments, the dead silence that came in response to her declaration was spine-chilling. They all looked at her with identical, flat expressions, and she had the strong sensation of being weighed and judged.

One of them said something about precognitives, that slid over Angela in her terror, but she didn't miss the jab in the stomach and the dirty looks that the others gave him. She wasn't supposed to know that, she guessed, and bit her lip on saying anything else.

The one who had been doing most of the talking took her into Cam's office, dragging her by the arm, while the others continued poking at her system. She was too terrified and confused to protest even though all of her senses were screaming at her to break and run and call for help.

The man laid down a bag on the desk and said another word. It froze her in place. He opened the bag, revealing a strange kit. Parchment, an old fashioned quill pen, ink bottles, a wicked-looking knife. He picked up the knife and ran it along her arm. Angela watched helplessly as the man caught her blood in the ink bottle. Her mind screamed even as her body remained completely still. She knew her heart should be racing, her breath coming fast, but neither of those things happened. She was still frozen when he bandaged her arm, when he sat at Cam's desk and used her blood - iher blood/i - to write words on the parchment.

When he was done, he held it out to her, pen still filled with her body's ink, and ordered her to sign.

Angela was compelled to sign, binding herself to the service of the Black Chamber.

She has learned, since that day, that few women who are also magic users have ever given birth after starting to use magic. Their names and fates are seared into her mind and burn hot in her veins every time she looks at Michael Vincent.

The Black Chamber has never told her what the precognitives saw about her or her son. In this, like so many other things she has learned since being bound into service, she truly does not want to know.

She doesn't know, for example, the innermost secrets of that shadowy organization that conscripted her. She doesn't know what Pelant hoped to gain by attacking her. She is a contractor, an external asset, someone that they have only intermittent contact with. There are too many people - her husband first and foremost - that would ask too many questions if Angela were ever to disappear for unexplained periods of time, or be seen talking to unknown figures on any sort of regular basis. Instead, they resort to elaborate means to pass her instructions. Spam email that somehow got through her filter. A random comment from a passer-by when she is out getting coffee that directs her to a dead letter drop.

Angela figures she can expect another contact soon. The news will tell them that Pelant is dead, but they will want the details from her. She knows that they are convinced Pelant was working with or for a greater organization - perhaps a foreign agency, perhaps not. Just then, looking at all those happy faces around her, she cannot quite bring herself to care. He is dead. The ones she loves are safer than they were. But they are only as safe as she, self-taught and afraid to go further, can make them.

That thought has kept her up at night, more than once.

As has the thought that the Black Chamber might have plans for her son - might have _seen_ something related to her son. She would give anything to keep him out of this.

She is afraid that "anything" might be her own life.

She is more afraid that even that might not be enough.

So while everyone else celebrates around her, Angela excuses herself, goes to the bathroom, and uses a spell of silence to hide the fact that she is crying.

* * *

Author's Notes:

This has been sitting on my hard drive, unfinished, since the Pelant arc started airing. I don't necessarily expect accurate science in my police procedurals, but the 'bone virus' made me start ranting aloud as soon as they introduced it. Making it so that Bones actually takes place in the Laundry universe made that whole story line believable instead of, well ... not.

With the somewhat astounding news that Fox is planning a Bones/Sleepy Hollow crossover, I felt like it was the right time to finish it off and publish it so I could beat them to the supernatural crossover game.


End file.
